Life isn't fair. It's one of the first lessons you learn. And it's not fair when you find yourself, or more accurately your home, right smack in the middle of a vital piece of infrastructure. There's been so many cases around the country over a long period of time, but more recently you had the buyout of houses after the Canterbury quakes. Technically the buyouts of more than 8,000 properties were structured as voluntary offers. However, many residents felt forced to accept because the Government explicitly stated that essential infrastructure and council services would cease in those zones. They would be no more. They'd be living in a literal no man's land. You had the buyout of 160 odd homes for the Waterview Tunnel. We've had 50 odd homes in Ranui in West Auckland bought by the council to make way for new floodplains and to uncover a buried piped stream. So if your house happened to be right over the top of that stream, you were gone.
